I read a reasonable-sounding hypothesis that this could have been adversaries testing the aircraft’s tracking and target-acquisition capabilities. If you’re te

I read a reasonable-sounding hypothesis that this could have been adversaries testing the aircraft’s tracking and target-acquisition capabilities. If you’re testing someone’s active radar, you would want a prominent object to catch their attention, which then moves in increasingly erratic patterns until tracking fails. The projected image/combined laser beam seems like a feasible way to achieve this, and I don’t think it takes a huge level of commitment from a national military to build one. Maybe coincident lasers were being projected from submarines just beneath the surface.